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Summary: Great Adventure Story....
Review: A WELL WRITTEN, brutally graphic tale based on the brief era of the mountain men. Though published several decades ago, the writing is fresh and excitingly paced. A keen and unbiased insight into the harsh realities of mountain men and Indian life during the early to mid 1800's. I've also enjoyed the Jeremiah Johnson movie, but similarities to this novel are remote. This is one of those books I found myself reading well past normal bedtime. The material quality of this paperback edition is superb. I highly recommend!
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Summary: Fosters a new appreciation of a unique era ... Jimi
Review: From the opening lines of this story, you feel like you're traveling with Sam Minard (renamed Jeremiah Johnson in the Robert Redford film) in the old west. Vardis Fisher weaves a tale that you can touch, smell, taste and see. I first read this book in 1980, and several times since then... and it always brings me back to a renewed appreciation for the American wilds. The movie was good, but doesn't begin to give you the flavor of the book.
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Summary: Vardis Fisher's best
Review: I read this book many years ago, and believe it will be my next, again. It is a book one dare not discard,as the second and third readings get better. Vardis Fisher captures the essence of the mountains,streams, and one can smell the camp fire and relate to the colorful fractured kings english. The movie With Redford was good but the book is better.
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Summary: A RENAISSANCE MAN IN THE AMERICAN WEST
Review: MOUNTAIN MAN continues to be a classic in American Western literature. The major foundation for the movie, Jeremiah Johnson, MOUNTAIN MAN tells the story of Samuel John Minard, a mountain man known for his physical prowess and for his quick and educated intellect. A renaissance man who has chosen the life of the great American West. In his adventures Sam meets up with Indians of various tribes, other mountain men and a crazy pilgrim woman. HIs marriage to an Indian maiden leads him into a one-man war with sweeping consequences for himself and for his enemies. MOUNTAIN MAN, as is the case with most books upon which movies are based, considerably outshines JEREMIAH JOHNSON in its story and characterizations. But, hey, I love the movie as well. I guess that says a lot aobut what I think of the book. THE HORSEMAN
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Summary: A RENAISSANCE MAN IN THE AMERICAN WEST
Review: MOUNTAIN MAN continues to be a classic in American Western literature. The major foundation for the movie, Jeremiah Johnson, MOUNTAIN MAN tells the story of Samuel John Minard, a mountain man known for his physical prowess and for his quick and educated intellect. A renaissance man who has chosen the life of the great American West. In his adventures Sam meets up with Indians of various tribes, other mountain men and a crazy pilgrim woman. HIs marriage to an Indian maiden leads him into a one-man war with sweeping consequences for himself and for his enemies. MOUNTAIN MAN, as is the case with most books upon which movies are based, considerably outshines JEREMIAH JOHNSON in its story and characterizations. But, hey, I love the movie as well. I guess that says a lot aobut what I think of the book. THE HORSEMAN
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Summary: THE ONE THAT STARTED IT ALL
Review: Quite interesting book, whose literary value I won't judge, but it has every rumor about Indians and every lie about Supermountainmen incorporated into it. I read it because of the movie, and the movie was better. If you ask me, Thorp's "Crow Killer" is more concise and more realistic. But if you are a West fan, guess you will want to read Fischer too.
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Summary: A Phenonemal Adventure
Review: The story of Sam Minard, based on the life of the 'Crow Killer,' the real Jeremiah Johnson, is a beautiful tale that combines the reality of the life of the mountain men in its most brutal form and the myth of the mountain man as we would like him to be. Sam Minard is the most accomplished of the mountain men, the best trapper, the best fighting man and absolutely ruthless as he applies his craft, but not far beneath the rugged exterior is a man of enormous sensitivity able to describe the beauty of the wilderness in detail that allows the reader to be there. In Chapter 18, Minard, still mourning the death of his wife, spends the winter in what is today Yellowstone Park. Minard's (Fisher's) description of the winter in the magical land of Yellowstone is one that has remained with me all my life and inspired me to perform my own explorations of wild country. If you have any interest in the mountain men, the west before it became the 'Old West,' or just like a damn well told story, this book will not disappoint.
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Summary: Remake of the "Crow Killer"
Review: This book is a redo of Thorp's "CROW KILLER" liver-eating Johnson. The name was changed to Sam but it was about Jeremy Johnson.
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Summary: A Brilliantly Written & Beautifully Expressed Tale
Review: This novel is a lifelong passion for me. I read Mountain Man as a project with my father when I was 11, some 22 years ago. I associate this work with wide-eyed boyhood and love of nature. It rings of a time when America was still a wild frontier of hard men, bent on survival and self government. I refuse to apply 90s political correctness to this novel. Such intellectual revisionism had no place in Sam Minard's world, and therefore it has no place in the assessment of the work itself after the fact. I have read this novel at least 25 times, and find new and more rapturous moments in it each successive time. The love that Sam had for Lotus and the regard he had for Kate are two of the most shining examples of literary love I have ever encountered. This book is a glorious orchestration of a seldom taught period of American history and an Old West adventure tale of the first order. It recounts a time of great courage and brutality, portrayed fairly and with much class and distinction. It would have been easy to make it sappy and formulaic, but Fisher deftly avoids such tactics. Instead, he is as detached from this novel as "The Almighty" was from the characters of Sam, Lotus, Kate and the Big Sky wilderness: He created, then set free his creation to fend for itself. Waugh! This is as solid a novel as there is on this subject, if not the finest ever.
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Summary: Poetry and Beauty
Review: This was the first book I had read by Vardis Fisher. He is a very colorful writer. His descriptions of every thing he sees and everything he thinks is wonderful. His knowledge of classical music is warming. I personally love classical music. Even though I enjoyed the book very much I did not like the continual repeat of his describing the scenry over and over.
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